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Way Station
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"Way Station" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*
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Here are my notes and thoughts during and after reading the bookChapter 1 – civil war, “old hate”, battle, a brief interlude of silence and then pain and crying – and we meet, briefly and as if in passing, Enoch Wallace.
The way the silence is portrayed here is beautiful and thoughtful.
Chapter 2 – Dr Erwin Hardwicke of the National Academy and Claude Lewis of the CIA discuss Enoch as a 124 year old man, born in 1840, so it places this conversation in 1964.
Lewis wants the doctor’s opinion on his observation and investigation of the old but unaged man who is sighted but seldom met.
It puzzles me that none of them touches upon the name of Enoch.
Enoch (Hebrew: חֲנוֹךְ Ḥănōḵ) derives from the Hebrew root חנך (ḥ-n-ḵ), meaning to train, initiate, dedicate, inaugurate, with חֲנוֹךְ/חֲנֹךְ (Ḥănōḵ) being the imperative form of the verb.
In the Old Testament we learn of Enoch, father of Methuselah, a man that never really died, but was taken by Yahweh at the age of 365 years, Enoch
«walked with God: and he was no more; for God took him»
Simak’s choice of name for the main character appears quite deliberate.
The text that follows the two first chapters is calm, serene and paints a picture of a benevolent human with only good intentions and love for the universe and everything it contains. He is portrayed as quite the saint, in pursuit of harmony and peace.
It is easy to read and follow the narrative, one can be at peace while reading as well. For some it might be a little too still.
Enoch keeps touching on the immaturity of humans. He knows a lot more than most and seems to think he can judge that humans are not ready or able to connect with the rest of the universe’s sentient beings. This started to annoy me. Probably alongside the assurance of the spiritual being. Because this is the worst and most hurtful part of religion, that it diminishes humans to a childlike state and belittles what humans are. Shame on Enoch! I truly hope this won’t be the prevalent tune along the book, in that case I might throw it into the fifth wall and leave it unread.
Enoch has a long and winding conversation with two characters that appear in his station out of thin air, Mary and David. It is a strange affair, it turns out they are not figments of his imagination, but magical beings he was taught to bring about by alien knowledge. In this single conversation he manages to mess it up and lose the connection with them. Afterwards he muses about their existence. We learn that he has been able to connect with them for the last fifty years, and he is contemplating this only now?
He has committed a sin, we learn. Again this Christian tomfoolery. The science feeling starts to shift towards the fairytale and ghostly end of whatever spectrum Simak travels on.
Some parts feel a little like Gulliver’s travels – except that Enoch does not travel, he receives travellers. It also makes me think of Holberg’s Niels Klim’s Underground Travels.
Enoch is notified of a Hazer coming to the station. This makes him reminisce about the first visit of these aliens back in 1915, when five of them came and stayed for a while. The Hazers are friendly, happy, carefree and gay, and they manage to spread their stance in a spiritual way. “They glowed in spirit” This happiness seems to expand to Enoch as well.
So as he loses his ghosts (“shadow people”) – a great loss, he immediately gains a promised visit from a Hazer. He can also expect a visit from the being that enlisted him to be a stationmaster, a being he has named Ulysses.
Enoch does not age while he is in the station. Yet he eats, and time seems to pass. This is never explained or explored more and hangs as a loose thread.
And then the gentle, loving Enoch shows his true colours. The Fishers come looking for Lucy.
“he knew the breed, vindictive in their smallness – little vicious insects of the human race. He stood beside the porch and watched them down the hill, wondering how a girl so fine as Lucy could spring from such decadent stock.”
And it gets worse. Enoch had to bury a Hazer that died at his station, and Lewis had dug up the remains and brought them to Washington. This has made the aliens furious, and they want to close down the station because humans are so barbaric. At the same time, and in total opposition to this view, the alien alliances argue about where stations should be put, in what directions the thousand different alien fractions that try to be a union should travel and have their focus. So the union is far from united, and still they as a union all think a grave robber is a barbarian. Sadly Enoch also thinks very little of his fellow humans. He has used some alien mathematics or statistics to calculate that Earth is on the brink of a new war. Sounds a bit like Asimov’s Psychohistory of Hari Seldon.
The ace up the sleeve seems to be Lucy. At first I thought of Lucy as the “missing link”, but the find of Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis wasn’t made until 11 years after this novel was written. Lucy is portrayed as uncorrupted, clean, a nature’s child – a little angel. The Hazers also have this property, it is as if Enoch has angels as friends. His only friends. Is Ulysses kind of God here? Ulysses is called the finder of Enoch and Earth by the Hazer that comes to confront Enoch with the missing carcass of the buried Hazer. But Ulysses is far from all powerful or omni anything. Maybe he is more like his namesake Odysseys.
As Ulysses and Enoch discuss the fraction of the union, Ulysses once again talks about the universal spiritual force. This force can be accessed through a Talisman, a device. But this device has now disappeared. I strongly suspect one of the travellers through Enoch’s way station has left it with him. Not that Enoch – or anyone else – knows that just yet. One of the gifts that Enoch has, was stimulated by Lucy, something Enoch was never able to do. And since she is so pure, so innocent, she may be the one to be able to connect to the spiritual force. Did I just foresee the plot? Am I a farseer?
The missing Talisman makes the alliance of the races crack. They are not held together as well when the spiritual force cannot guide them. So not only is human kind hopeless without a god, the whole shebang of the universe needs spiritual guidance. This worldview stinks!
While Enoch awaits his destiny, thinking that the station will be closed down and he will be forced to either grow old on Earth or move to another station, a stranger comes through the portal used by the “officials” and tries to destroy the control mechanisms. Enoch fights him off, and the alien escapes to the outside – out on Earth. Enoch chases him, and has him cornered, but the stranger has a weapon and fires, so Enoch takes cover and contemplates his options. Then both Lucy and Ulysses appear, Lucy in fight with the stranger, Ulysses by Enoch’s side. Enoch shoots and kills the alien, and Lucy retrieves the Talisman the stranger had stolen, and she connects with it like no one has been able to in a long, long time. What did I predict a few paragraphs above?
It all ends with the happy conclusion that Enoch can stay in his station, Earth can join the galactic federation and Lucy can mingle with the Talisman to her heart’s content.
All in all this is a story about an old man afraid of change living in changing times he is hardly part of. His loneliness is spelled out, at the same time his resolution and hope, his intentions stay outside of himself, only when he feels totally abandoned and thinks his station will disappear, does he think of what he really wants himself – to stay on Earth rather than move to a new station. His true care for and empathy with Lucy is genuine, and his care for and empathy with the alien Hazer that died on his station is also seen and appreciated by the aliens and Lewis. He shoots and kills the Talisman thief, but that does not seem to affect anyone at all, not even Enoch.
It was a fun read, short for this day and age. There is a kind of timeless feel to it, very befitting indeed.
Trude, that is a well thought out review! I had not thought about the choice of the name Enoch. Good catch! I liked the world. I appreciated the descriptions of the natural world surrounding the house. I loved the mailman and his efforts to help. I thought Lucy and Enoch would get together, and that the aliens would be able to heal Lucy, but I was wrong about both!
I also liked that the alien races had been, up to recently, been able to get along and live in peace with each other. LIke one of my other favorite old series, Sector General. The way the author discussed how they had all got along, focussing on the big issues and not the little, and how that reversed, and how like this is still us today. (p148-149) His paragraph on P 164 about "the moment he had realized the insanity of war" hit home with me, for I feel much this same way. We fight and kill each other over bits of land and what does it matter in the long run? It's just so sad, killing all these perfectly wonderful human beings for such stupid reasons.
My biggest problem was Lewis and the fact that the CIA funded him and his crew for years just to watch this guy in the woods. Pfff.
I gave this 3 stars simply because it was a thoughtful read, but not one that engaged me too much until the end. Guess I prefer a little more action which is why I preferred it more towards the end.
Trude wrote: "In the Old Testament we learn of Enoch, father of Methuselah, a man that never really died, but was taken by Yahweh at the age of 365 years."I'm glad you researched this because I kept thinking of Methuselah when pondering Enoch and the life he lived.
I'll come back to the questions posed above in a later post, but I wanted to see what others thought about some of the "asides" included in the book. I'm thinking specifically of1. Mary and David who were introduced mid-chapter 13 and then dismissed at the end of the chapter. They seemed like AI holographs that had evolved and become sentient over 50 years. It was just weird how they got pissy and decided not to visit Enoch anymore.
2. The "holodeck" used in Ch 28 that provided Enoch with a wider world than he could experience on his little property.
I felt like these two topics were complete nonsequiturs, and Simak seemed to be pondering them but hadn't really fleshed out the ideas fully. Were other scifi writers at the time thinking and writing about these types of technologies?
Mod
I believe Mary came back later in chapter 36
Allison wrote: "I do feel like a lot of this book was very sudden with no foreshadowing or build up to allow us to appreciate the impact.I think you've hit the nail on the head here. The generated people appear in the way station without providing much history about their long relationship with Enoch.
"I believe Mary came back later in chapter 36"
Indeed, she did but only to say goodbye again.
I thought it was a bit sad that the generated people resented Enoch for creating them. Did they feel wronged that they couldn't be "real" people? Were they Pinnochios? I think it would have been more interesting if they continued to act independently. But maybe being stuck in the way station would have been a pretty limited life.
1. What did you think of the world?I enjoyed Simak’s description of the woods around Enoch’s house and Enoch’s relationship with the natural world. It is intriguing that his experience on Earth is limited to the property near his house, while his access to the universe and its many species of aliens is limited to his tiny house.
2. What did you think of Enoch's POV?
Enoch's point of view has been shaped by long-term, vicarious interaction with the outside world (newspapers, journals) and the galaxy (travelers). He doesn’t get to participate in either the Earth or the galaxy fully and seems to be an observer of events until the end of the book when all of the action occurs.
3. What did you think of the politicking?
I thought the discussions of politics were fairly shallow in the book. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of politics on Earth except for the allusions of a possible nuclear war. The acceptance of Earth into the galactic society also felt extremely easy, and galactic politics only became contentious with the loss of the Talisman.
4. What worked or didn't for you?
I really loved the idea of a stopover for aliens in the backwoods of Wisconsin, which made the way station both cosmopolitan in a galactic sense and provincial. I thought it was a great place to hide the way station. I also enjoyed that Lucy was seen as broken by humans but was considered an enlightened being to the aliens.
I was underwhelmed with the character development. Even with all of Enoch’s ruminations, he seemed a bit flat to me. And all of the other characters were 2 dimensional.
I thoroughly disliked the idea of the Talisman, which seemed like a panacea. Enoch mentions multiple times that humans were too immature to join galactic society, but galactic society relied on the Talisman to keep different groups of aliens from fighting with each other. Without the Talisman, the aliens were as doomed as to pettiness and anger as humans.
One thing that I tend to find irksome in older book is the use of “Man” and “Mankind” to represent all humans and the pronoun “he” as a gender-neutral pronoun. It’s just a part of society and writing at the time, but it rubs me the wrong way every time I see it.
5. Overall thoughts?
I thought this book was either too short or too long. I know that’s contradictory! The book had the scope of a novella but had some extra bits that I would have either deleted or elaborated on.
Off the cuff reactions are as follows:I really liked how Hardwicke and Lewis's conversation about Enoch serves as like an introduction, but found it hard to believe that Lewis had all this pull with the government to make things happen at the end.
The book, like a roller coaster really takes off after the climb in the beginning, but everything feels low stakes. So in a way, it was like riding Raging Wolf Bob's (a wooden coaster). Thrilling, but limited.
I became very interested in the journals, and after reading how important they were to Enoch, wondered how an entry-log style would come across.
Knee jerk rating was a 4, but day-after reflection puts it closer to a 3.238.
Wil wrote: " found it hard to believe that Lewis had all this pull with the government to make things happen at the end...."Or that the government would give back the body of an alien immediately, without a peep - and give it to Hardwicke to bring to Enoch. As if it was a misdelivered package!
I don't think this was bad writing, so much as Simak not caring about the plot as much as the ideas. I wrote a short review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I've re-read this short novel with another group recently and I like some points I see in this discussion.Trude wrote: "It puzzles me that none of them touches upon the name of Enoch."
Other authors also played with the name, e.g. a character in Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson is one Enoch Rutt
On CIA returning the body, I guess this works best with Mike Resnick preface, where he stressed that Simak deeply believed that all people are good and polite at the start, maybe corrupted later... on a more jaded level maybe CIA checked the house in greater detail than it is shown in the book and understood they don't only deal with supernatural but with supernatural of incomparable higher power (assume they tried to force the door is a mini-nuke), so they know they ought to avoid conflict at all costs
My review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Trude wrote: "Here are my notes and thoughts ..."Good notes!
And, Cheryl, I have the same issue with those two "asides". They were not at all necessary for this book.
I have other quibbles: I didn't like the addition of Lucy's magic, nor the talisman. And I predicted early on that the talisman was one of Enoch's gifts and that Lucy would activate it.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed it enough to rate 4 stars. It had the right gentle feel that I needed right now.
I mostly enjoyed Way Station. It was a quiet, thoughtful book with surprisingly good prose. It may be too slow-paced for some, and if you don't enjoy pages of musings over human nature and the trajectory of the human species and the galaxy, it may not be the book for you. I disliked the Talisman (MacGuffin of Galactic Peace) because it solved all the problems and wrapped up the novel literally deus ex machina. It seems as if the author was trying to point to religious experience as the only solution to make everyone get along (not that religion has a very good historical record on that, but maybe he didn't identify those as the same thing). I also thought that the imaginary friends were like a bit of a short story dropped into the novel out of nowhere. I'm not quite sure why they are included--to underscore Enoch's loneliness? To show him renouncing companionship like some cross between a lone cowboy and a priest? Despite those quibbles, it was an enjoyable read.
Jessica wrote: "I mostly enjoyed Way Station. It was a quiet, thoughtful book with surprisingly good prose. It may be too slow-paced for some, and if you don't enjoy pages of musings over human nature and the traj..."Jessica, you expressed well how I also felt about this one. I finished it earlier this month but was having trouble putting my thoughts about it into words. I found Enoch’s musings to be really interesting, and there were several times when I wanted to write down a quote from the book. I enjoyed the quiet, mostly peaceful vibe of the story - Enoch’s descriptions of the natural world, his relationships with the postman and the alien visitors. I, too, found the imaginary characters distracting, especially when Mary comes back at the end, which I would have preferred the author to leave out. I agree with others that the government agent parts are not particularly realistic, though that didn’t occur to me or bother me as I was reading. Overall, I’m really glad to have read this one. I would not have picked it up if it wasn’t a group read.
Chapter 12/13These chapters are so melancholy! The memories, the friendships, the remorse, the loneliness. Heart-wrenching.
How he brought the David Ransome and Mary beings to life... but only partway. And remembering how he saw a woman on a plantation as he passed by during the Civil War, and that memory became part of Mary:
She was as well that tall, stately daughter of the South, the woman he had seen for a few moments only as he marched a dusty road in the hot Virginia sun. There had been a mansion, one of those great plantation houses, set back from the road, and she had been standing on the portico, beside one of the great white pillars, watching the enemy march past. Her hair was black and her complexion whiter than the pillar and she had stood so straight and proud, so defiant and imperious, that he had remembered her and thought of her and dreamed of her—although he never knew her name—through all the dusty, sweaty, bloody days of war. Wondering as he thought and dreamed of her if the thinking and the dreaming might be unfaithful to his Sally. Sitting around the campfire, when the talk grew quiet, and again, rolled in his blankets, staring at the stars, he had built up a fantasy of how, when the war was ended, he’d go back to that Virginia house and find her. She might be there no longer, but he still would roam the South and find her. But he never did; he had never really meant to find her. It had been a campfire dream.
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Cryptonomicon (other topics)Authors mentioned in this topic
Neal Stephenson (other topics)Mike Resnick (other topics)
A few questions to get us started:
1. What did you think of the world?
2. What did you think of Enoch's POV?
3. What did you think of the politicking?
4. What worked or didn't for you?
5. Overall thoughts?
Non-spoiler thread here: First impressions